European Free Software Policy Meeting 2017

on: 2017-02-14

Written by Polina Malaja

Building on the experience from last year's successful
pre-FOSDEM meeting, the Free
Software Foundation Europe and OpenForum Europe recently
continued the tradition of bringing together active Free Software groups
a day before the FOSDEM event, in order to discuss public policy related
actions at both the EU and the national levels. This year, the meeting
focused on encouraging exchanges of views between individual citizens
and decision-makers, by providing practical first-hand information on topics
relating to Free Software in public policy.

Next, Pierre Damas (Head of Sector, Digital Services at the Directorate
General of Information Technologies of the European Commission) shared
with the group some of the Commission's plans for
updating its Open Source Software Strategy, identifying
the key barriers and motivations for adopting it in practice. According
to Pierre Damas, although within the Commission Free Software is technically now
treated equally with its proprietary counterparts, there remains a lack
of political will to back up the mainstream adoption of Free Software technologies
within the EU institutions. According to him, the next step for the updated
Open Source Strategy in the Commission is the "digital transformation" of
areas such as "cloud", big data, and the "Internet of Things".

Jaana Sahk-Labi (from the Estonian Permanent Representation to the EU) presented
Estonia's national framework for supporting the implementation of Free Software. Estonia is
considered to be the leader in e-Government at the EU level, and is planning
to highlight e-Government topics during its presidency of the Council of
the EU, in the second half of 2017. One of the main challenges for the
Estonian government in the upcoming presidency will be the right approach
for future-proofing "no legacy" policies that continue after the term of
Estonia's presidency has come to an end. Consequently, Estonia is preaching
for a digital revolution in the EU institutions.

Laurent Joubert (from the French government) presented
the Open Source Contribution Policy Template which has been drafted
by numerous representatives from governments, non-governmental
organisations, companies, international organisations and academic sector
as a part of the Open
Government Partnership. The aim of this template is to provide an easily
shareable and ready-to-use template for governments – as well as other
public administrations - to set up a policy for code contributions made
by civil servants, which have to be open by default. The ultimate goal of
such a policy is to facilitate, share and reuse the code developed by and
for public administrations.

The speakers' presentations were followed by a round table discussion, engaging
the participants in considering the possibility creating a dashboard, which
would serve as a tool for advocacy groups to assess best practices and
policies for supporting Free Software and Open Standards (OS) in Member States. Part
of the discussion was dedicated to finding ways to evaluate the existing
national or regional policies which support Free Software. A couple of identified
indicators of "openness" were: the level of Free Software usage; and the fact of
using global analytics of online procedures. In addition, certain other
criteria will also need to be taken into account: transparency of how Free Software
is adopted in the public sector; the implementation of the policy in practice; and
product maturity. The participants agreed to start working on listing the
parameters which would describe "best behaviour" on the part of government, with
a view to developing concrete steps or actions to support governments to
achieve this.

The meeting was a stepping-stone, paving the way for a bigger collaboration
on how to promote public policies supporting Free Software across Europe. We hope to continue
the collaboration and to coordinate our actions in order to collectively
make a difference on the policy level.

Share and support

Press

About FSFE

Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology.

Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important
that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software
gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software.
These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of
speech, freedom of press and privacy.